The Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed :: :: University of Virginia Library

There was a Dragon in Arthur's time,
(When dragons and griffins were voted prime,)
Of monstrous reputation:
Up and down, and far and wide,
He roamed about in his scaly pride;
And ever, at morn and even-tide,
He made such rivers of blood to run
As shocked the sight of the blushing sun.
And deluged half the nation.

It was a pretty monster too,
With a crimson head, and a body blue,

And wings of a warm and delicate hue,
Like the glow of a deep carnation;
And the terrible tail that lay behind,
Reached out so far as it twisted and twined,
That a couple of dwarfs, of wondrous strength,
Bore, when he travelled, its horrible length,
Like a Duke's at the Coronation.
His mouth had lost one ivory tooth,
Or the Dragon had been, in very sooth,
No insignificant charmer;
And that—alas! he had ruined it,
When on new-year's day, in a hungry fit,
He swallowed a tough and a terrible bit—
Sir Lob, in his brazen armour.
Swift and light were his steps on the ground.
Strong and smooth was his hide around,
For the weapons which the peasants flung
Ever unfelt or unheeded rung,
Arrow and stone and spear,
As snow o'er Cynthia's window flits,
Or raillery of twenty wits
On a fool's unshrinking ear.

In many a battle the beast had been,
Many a blow he had felt and given:
Sir Digorè came with a menacing mien,
But he sent Sir Digorè straight to Heaven;

Stiff and stour were the arms he wore,
Huge the sword he was wont to clasp;
But the sword was little, the armour brittle,
Locked in the coil of the Dragon's grasp.

He came on Sir Florice of Sesseny Land,
Pretty Sir Florice from over the sea,
And smashed him all as he stepped on the sand,
Cracking his head like a nut from the tree.
No one till now had found, I trow,
Any thing good in the scented youth,
Who had taken much pains to be rid of his brains,
Before they were sought by the Dragon's tooth.

He came on the Sheriff of Hereford,
As he sat him down to his Sunday dinner;
And the Sheriff he spoke but this brief word,
“St. Francis be good to a corpulent sinner!”
Fat was he, as a Sheriff might be,
From the crown of his head to the tip of his toe;
But the Sheriff was small, or nothing at all,
When put in the jaws of the Dragon foe.

He came on the Abbot of Arnondale,
As he kneeled him down to his morning devotion;
But the Dragon he shuddered, and turned his tail
About, “with a short uneasy motion.”

Iron and steel, for an early meal,
He stomached with ease, or the Muse is a liar;
But out of all question, he failed in digestion,
If ever he ventured to swallow a friar!

Monstrous brute!—his dread renown
Made whispers and terrors in country and town;
Nothing was babbled by boor or knight
But tales of his civic appetite.
At last, as after dinner he lay,
Hid from the heat of the solar ray
By boughs that had woven an arbour shady,
He chanced to fall in with the Headless Lady.
Headless? alas! 'twas a piteous gibe;
I'll drink Aganippe, and then describe.

Her father had been a stout yeoman,
Fond of his jest and fond of his can,
But never over-wise;
And once, when his cups had been many and deep,
He met with a dragon fast asleep,—
'Twas a Fairy in disguise.
In a dragon's form she had ridden the storm,
The realm of the sky invading;
Sir Grahame's ship was stout and fast,
But the Fairy came on the rushing blast,
And shivered the sails, and shivered the mast,

And down went the gallant ship at last,
With all the crew and lading.
And the Fay laughed out to see the rout,
As the last dim hope was fading;
And this she had done in a love of fun,
And a love of masquerading.
She lay that night in a sunny vale,
And the yeoman found her sleeping;
Fiercely he smote her glittering tail,
But oh! his courage began to fail,
When the Fairy rose all weeping.
“Thou hast lopped,” she said, “beshrew thine nand!
The fairest foot in Fairy-land!

“Thou hast an infant in thine home!—
Never to her shall reason come,
For weeping or for wail,
Till she shall ride with a fearless face
On a living dragon's scale.
And fondly clasp to her heart's embrace
A living dragon's tail.”
The Fairy's form form his shuddering signt
Flowed away in a stream of light.

Disconsolate that youth departed,
Disconsolate and poor;
And wended, chill and broken-hearted,
To his cottage on the moor;

Sadly and silently he knelt
His lonely hearth beside;
Alas! how desolate he felt,
As he hid his face, and cried.
The cradle where the babe was laid
Stood in its own dear nook,
But long—how long!—he knelt, and prayed,
And did not dare to look.
He looked at last; his joy was there.
And slumbering with that placid air
Which only babes and angels wear.
Over the cradle he leaned his head:
The cheek was warm, and the lip was red;
And he felt, he felt, as he saw her lie,
A hope—which was a mockery.
The babe unclosed her eye's pale lid:—
Why doth he start from the sight it hid?
He hath seen in the dim and fitful ray,
That the light of the soul hath gone away!
Sigh nor prayer he uttered there,
In mute and motionless despair,
But he laid him down beside his child,
And Lillian saw him die—and smiled.
The mother? she had gone before;
And in the cottage on the moor,
With none to watch her and caress,
No arm to clasp, no voice to bless,

The witless child grew up alone,
And made all Nature's book her own

If, in the warm and passionate hour
When Reason sleeps in Fancy's bower,
If thou hast ever, ever felt
A dream of delicate beauty melt
Into the heart's recess,
Seen by the soul, and seen by the mind,
But indistinct in its loveliness,
Adored, and not defined;
A bright creation, a shadowy ray,
Fading and flitting in mist away,
Nothing to gaze on, and nothing to hear,
But something to cheat the eye and ear
With a fond conception and joy of both,
So that you might, that hour, be loth
To change for Some one's sweetest kiss
Thy vision of unenduring bliss,
Or lose for Some one's sweetest tone
The murmur thou drinkest all alone—
If such a vision hath ever been thine,
Thou hast a heart that may look on mine!

For oh! the light of my saddened theme
Was like to nought but a poet's dream,

Or the forms that come on the twilight's wing,
Shaped by the soul's imagining.
Beautiful shade, with her tranquil air,
And her thin white arm, and her flowing hair,
And the light of her eye so coldly obscure,
And the hue of her cheek so pale and pure!
Reason and thought she had never known,
Her heart was as cold as a heart of stone;
So you might guess from her eyes' dim rays,
And her idiot laugh, and her vacant gaze.
She wandered about all lone on the heather,
She and the wild heath-birds together;
For Lillian seldom spoke or smiled,
But she sang as sweet as a little child.
Into her song her dreams would throng,
Silly, and wild, and out of place;
And yet that wild and roving song
Entranced the soul in its desolate grace.
And hence the story had ever run
That the fairest of dames was a Headless One.

The pilgrim in his foreign weeds
Would falter in his prayer;
And the monk would pause with his half-told beads
To breathe a blessing there;
The knight would loose his vizor-clasp,
And drop the rein from his nerveless grasp,

And pass his hand across his brow
With a sudden sigh, and a whispered vow,
And marvel Flattery's tale was told,
From a lip so young, to an ear so cold.

She had seen her sixteenth winter out,
When she met with the beast I was singing about:
The Dragon, I told you, had dined that day;
So he gazed upon her as he lay,
Earnestly looking, and looking long,
With his appetite weak, and his wonder strong.
Silent he lay in his motionless coil;
And the song of the Lady was sweet the while:—

“Nonny nonny!—I hear it float,
Innocent bird, thy tremulous note:
It comes from thy home in the eglantine,
And I stay this idle song of mine,
Nonny nonny!—to listen to thine!

“Nonny nonny!—‘Lillian sings
The sweetest of all living things!’
So Sir Launcelot averred;
But surely Sir Launcelot never heard
Nonny nonny!—the natural bird!”

The Dragon he lay in mute amaze,
Till something of kindness crept into his gaze;

He drew the flames of his nostrils in,
He veiled his claws with their speckled skin,
He curled his fangs in a hideous smile;
And the song of the Lady was sweet the while:—

“Nonny nonny!—who shall tell
Where the summer breezes dwell?
Lightly and brightly they breathe and blow,
But whence they come and whither they go,
Nonny nonny!—who shall know?

“Nonny nonny!—I hear your tone,
Put I feel ye cannot read mine own;
And I lift my neck to your fond embraces,
But who hath seen in your resting places
Nonny nonny!—your beautiful faces?”

A moment! and the Dragon came
Crouching down to the peerless dame,
With his fierce red eye so fondly shining,
And his terrible tail so meekly twining,
And the scales on his huge limbs gleaming o'er,
Gayer than ever they gleamed before.
She had won his heart, while she charmed his ear,
And Lillian smiled, and knew no fear.
And see, she mounts between his wings;
(Never a queen had a gaudier throne),

And fairy-like she sits and sings,
Guiding the steed with a touch and a tone.
Aloft, aloft in the clear blue ether,
The dame and the Dragon they soared together;
He bore her away on the breath of the gale—
The two little dwarfs held fast by the tail.

Fanny! a pretty group for drawing;
My dragon like a war-horse pawing,
My dwarfs in a fright, and my girl in an attitude,
Patting the beast in her soulless gratitude.
There; you may try it if you will,
While I drink my coffee, and nib my quill.

END OF CANTO I.